1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus capable of performing a correcting process when an image is printed on a print medium with respect to extraction image data extracted from compression data of the image, a printer including the same, and at image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in an image printing process, image processing of decompressing compression data such as JPEG so as to extract original image data and converting into print data according to a specified print layout is performed. A processing time necessary for the image processing is increased by increase in number of pixels configuring an image. As a result, a standby time until the start of the printing is increased. Accordingly, there is a need for shortening the processing time by increasing the efficiency of the processing.
As an example of the increase in efficiency of the processing, a technology of shortening a processing time when a compressed image is rotated and output is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2006-101014.
However, an image may be printed on one page in plural numbers. For example, there is allocation print in which one image is printed on one page at four places or layout print in which one image is printed on one page at a plurality of places according to a layout having a predetermined position and a predetermined size (and a predetermined shape). When one image is printed on one page at the plurality of places, the image to be printed may be individually subjected to a correcting process. For example, if the face of a person included in the image is dark, a brightness correcting process of brightening the face of each of the images to be printed is performed.
If the image correcting process is performed, a process of acquiring characteristic information (for example, skin color information, brightness information or the like) of data to be corrected from the image data of an original image and calculating a necessary correction amount is performed. The process of acquiring the characteristic information is generally performed as follows. That is, sample image data sampled from the original image data is generated, a predetermined statistical value computation is performed with respect to the generated sample image data, and the result of computing the statistically value is acquired as the characteristic information.
At this time, since the sampling process of generating the sample image data from the original image data includes an image deployment process, a processing time is increased. Accordingly, if the image requiring the correction is printed on one page in plural numbers in a state in which one image has a different correction condition, since the sampling processing tine is required by the plurality off pixels when printing is performed, a standby tire until the start of the printing is increased. Accordingly, if a plurality of images to be corrected are printed on one page, there is a need for shortening the processing time by increasing the efficiency of the processing.